WORLD RECONSTRUCTION PAPERS . 


Second Series—_No. 1 


_ My Place in the 
—  World’s Work | 


bis 
GALEN M. FISHER 


Set 


STUDENT VOLUNTEER MOVEMENT 
25 Madison Avenue, New York 





GALEN M. FISHER is National General 
Secretary of the Young Men’s Christian 
Association in Japan. 


MY PLACE IN THE WORLD’S WORK 
GALEN M. FISHER. 


When Booker Washington, ragged and ungainly, 
applied for admission to Hampton College, and for 
work to pay his way, the New England schoolma’am 
who was examining applicants asked him what he 
could do. Booker’s repertoire was severely limited, 
but he replied that he could clean a room. She 
set him to work on a schoolroom, with the result 
that even she could find no dust as she rubbed her 
handkerchief along the ledges. That was Booker’s 
entrance examination. 

Matriculation today into the great college of world 
service is based on a similar test—the will to put 
the best there is in us into the task. The most 
striking thing about the service is that there is 
a task and career for every kind of talent and 
training. Fifty years ago the possible varieties 
of foreign missionary work were limited to the min- 
istry, medicine and teaching. Today it would be 
hard to name a respectable occupation which can 
not be turned to good account in the Christian move- 
ment abroad. Almost any man or woman with a 
well-poised mind in a sound body, with a living 
Christian character and an intense desire to have 


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other men share his faith and knowledge, can be 
utilized on the vast plantation of the mission field. 


FROM SHIP CAPTAIN TO MISSIONARY 


Seamanship, for example, might not be looked 
upon as likely to open a career in missionary service 
in Japan. Yet that unlocked the door to Captain 
Luke Bickel, the Fukuin-maru (Gospel Ship) skip- 
per-apostle. With Yankee ingenuity and a shrewd 
knowledge of the human heart gained by years at 
sea, he gradually won the confidence of the. conserv- 
ative dwellers of the Inland Sea, and within fifteen 
years developed a staff of Japanese workers and a 
chain of churches and regular stations where hardly 
one had been before. Although he began his mis- 
sionary career in middle life, so determined was he 
to tell about Christ that he won a fluent command 
of the Japanese language and preached to high and 
low with power.* 


PUTTING RELIGION INTO THE SOIL 


Nor does agriculture at first thought seem to offer 
a hopeful means for spreading Christianity. Yet 
in India Professor Sam Higginbottom, and in China 
Professor Joseph Bailie have found in it a master key 
to the confidence of officials and land owners and a 





*Captain Bickel of the Inland Seas. C. K. Harrington, 
Revell, N. Y. 


4. 


means to lighten the economic burdens of the com- 
mon people and win a welcome for Christian 
teaching. 

A unique, almost romantic, application of agricul- 
tural and economic science combined with brother- 
liness is being worked out for the redemption of 
the people of South India. The case is this: A down- 
trodden peasantry, ignorant and superstitious, are 
hopelessly in debt to Parsee money lenders who 
exact from 25 to 100 per cent. interest. Preaching 
and teaching alone will not touch them. Some Young 
Men’s Christian Association secretaries, brilliantly 
adapting the County “Y” experience in America, 
make the triangle into a square by adding an eco- 
nomic side. They organize all the heads of houses in 
village after ‘village into Farmers’ Loan and Im- 
provement Societies through which any member can 
borrow at 7 per cent. from the Cooperative Christian 
Central Bank of Madras. All the members in each 
society go bond for the borrowers. Government in- 
spectors audit accounts. As soon as financial rehab- 
ilitation is assured, the villagers are ready for night 
schools and simple lectures. As soon as the burdens 
are off their backs, their heels feel light and they 
want to play group games and sing and have the care- 
free recreation that premature labor robbed them of 
in youth. Then as the culmination of it all they listen 
gladly to the Gospel as it is presented by those who 
have already redeemed them from debt and want. 


a 


BUSINESS AGENTS 


The mention of this economic approach in Chris- 
tian work suggests that there is a demand for a 
few men and women of business training to serve 
as financial and general business agents on the 
field. In China many of the missions have such 
agents and at Shanghai a number of them have 
united in forming a joint business office. 


MULTIPLYING PERSONALITY 


There are calls in the mission field for teachers 
of well-nigh all the subjects that are offered in the 
high school and college curricula of North Amer- 
ica. Increasingly the demand is for teachers of 
the most thorough professional training, because 
the educational standards in countries like Japan 
and China and India already approximate those in 
America. But hard as the mission boards find it 
to secure candidates who are professionally compe- 
tent, they find it even harder to secure candidates 
who are like springs of living water spiritually. And 
it is only those two elements vitally combined 
in magnetic Christian personality that warrant the 
churches of North America in sending men and 
women as teachers to those advanced nations, which 
lack not intellectual culture but the dynamic of vic- 
torious character. 

But the central task of every man or woman who 


6 


goes across the deep, whether to preach or to plow, 
to teach or to doctor for Christ, is to become, like 
Jesus Himself, a teacher of teachers, a trainer of 
leaders. One of the greatest of missionaries, judged 
by this test, was Dr. S. R. Brown, of Yokohama. 
Among that first group of ambitious Japanese lads 
who braved obloquy and learned English and the 
Bible at his feet are to be numbered Bishop Honda, 
the first Japanese Bishop, and the intellectual and 
spiritual leaders of the Presbyterian Church.* 

The extraordinary multiplicative power of the 
lay teacher-missionary finds notable illustration 
in the case of Professor William 8. Clark, who went 
to Japan fifty years ago. In 1874 the Japanese 
Government called him from the Massachusetts 
State Agriculture College to found Japan’s pioneer 
agricultural college at Sapporo. They requested him 
to teach ethics also, but without using the Bible. 
He declared that for him ethics and the Bible were 
inseparable, and that if he were forbidden to use 
the Bible, he must courteously, but firmly, decline 
to teach at all. The officials yielded. The result 
was that though he spent but ten months there, a 
score of the brightest men in the first class were 
converted, and today they are passing on the torch 
in many professions: Dr. Sato is president of that 
same college, now become the Northeast Imperial 





*A Maker of New Orient. W. E. Griffis, Revell, N. Y. 


~ 


University; Dr. Nitobe, professor of colonial ad- 
ministration in Tokyo Imperial University, is influ- 
encing tens of thousands by his writings; Professor 
Miyabe is Japan’s most eminent teacher of botany; 
and Mr. Uchimura, the author of “The Diary of a 
Japanese Convert,” is the most widely read Biblical 
teacher in the Empire. To this day “President 
Clark” is revered by the students and alumni of 
Sapporo and his words are quoted like Holy Writ. 
Yet he was there less than a year. 


A CAMPAIGN OF FRIENDSHIP 

It should be noticed that in this instance it was 
intensive work with small groups that brought such 
marvelous results. Even though it would be absurd 
to say that public preaching should be given up 
and all effort concentrated on individuals and 
groups, it is at least true that in the foreign field 
as well as at home personal work is highly produc- 
tive and is literally indispensable. If by any mis- 
fortune one of the two had to be cut out of mis- 
sionary work, it would not be group and personal 
work. Hence no student need worry as to finding 
a place in the field because he is slow of speech or 
unimpressive as a preacher. William Borden, the 
Princeton volunteer, was famous as the “million- 
aire missionary,” but had he lived longer it is alto- 
gether likely that he would have become famous as 
a winner of souls in China. For at college and dur- 


8 


ing his study of Arabic in Cairo, wherever he hap- 
pened to be, he was a live wire in individual work. © 

Howard A. Walter, of Princeton and Hartford, 
may seem at first to have been too much of a genius 
to be a model for the average man. It is true that 
during his all too brief service in India he became 
one of the few authorities on Islam and at the same 
time he stirred thousands of students by his arti- 
cles in “Young Men of India,” and thousands more 
in other lands by “My Creed” and other poems. But 
one of his intimates told the writer that he remem- 
bered Walter above all else as a radiant friend and 
lover of men. He was an unaffected but irresistible 
soul-winner. The encouraging point is that although 
few men can hope to equal him as a scholar or a 
poet, it is perfectly practicable for everyone to emu- 
late his untiring eagerness to lead men to the great 
Friend. 


BUILDING MEN AND BUILDINGS 


Mackay of Uganda showed to what good account 
engineering knowledge could be turned in Christian 
pioneering, but it remained for an American volun- 
teer in Japan, William Merrell Vories, to show how 
architecture may be used to build the Kingdom. He 
was engaged in 1905 to inject English conversation 
into the five hundred boys in a provincial govern- 
ment commercial school at Hachiman, Omi, a suffi- 
ciently dull and dispiriting job, unless transfigured 


9 


by a divine motive. Within a year a group of stu- 
dents gathered in his lodgings to study the Bible, 
and despite taunts and persecution at home and 
school, a handful of the boys became Christians. 
Their light could not be hid. Converts multiplied. 
The Buddhists stirred up a provnce-wide agitation 
against this missionary disguised as a teacher, and 
the Governor reluctantly declined to renew the 
teacher’s contract. Did he meekly leave, accepting 
it as a sign that he should return to America? Re- 
duced to a few cents, he bethought him of his hobby 
in college, architectural drawing, and gradually built 
up an architectural business incorporated as W. M. 
Vories & Company, which requires a staff of a dozen 
Japanese and two American associates. Side by side 
with the business and largely supported by it, there 
has grown up the hundred-handed Omi Mission, 
which is not only evangelizing all parts of the hith- 
erto neglected province of Omi, but is also carrying 
on one of the most original and valuable experi- 
mental laboratories of missionary method to be 
found anywhere. The whole mission—the building 
department, the farm, the tubercular sanatorium, 
the student dormitory, the railway Young Men’s 
Christian Association Club, the women’s work, the 
magazine, and the preaching launch, Galilee Maru, 
on Lake Biwa, are all saturated with the same de- 
votion to Christ which impelled the founder. The 


10 


Mustard Seed sown in Omi fourteen years ago has 
become a fruitful tree.* 

The huge funds recently raised by the various 
churches in the United States will lead to extensive 
building on the foreign field—schools, residences, 
hospitals, churches, social settlements and hostels. 
It is therefore altogether likely that there will be 
more opportunities abroad for trained architects 
and building superintendents who covet a chance to 
make their talents count directly for the Kingdom 
of God and who are willing to go out on a missionary 
basis. Mr. E. F. Black and Mr. W. W. Wiant have 
abundantly demonstrated the value of such service 
by what they and their Chinese assistants have done 
under the name of The Foochow Construction Com- 
pany. 

JUMPING HURDLES 


A modern instance of a hindered volunteer who 
climbed over all obstacles and “made good’ was 
Raymond P. Gorbold, of Lane Theological Seminary. 
A weak heart properly enough led to his rejection by 
the Presbyterian Board, but he said he would rather 
die young in Japan than become old in America. 
So he accepted a call from the Young Men’s Chris- 
tian Association to teach English in a Government 
High School in Yamaguchi. He was a man of aver- 





*A Mustard Seed in Japan. Wm. Merrell Vories, Hachi- 
man, Omi, Japan. 


11 


age endowment, except that he was fairly glowing 
with good cheer and with love for the souls of men. 
During his two year term he drew scores of students 
to his home to study the Bible and led many of them 
to Christ. Then he returned to complete his theo- 
logical studies and once more applied to the Board. 
This time he was accepted, and sent back rejoicing 
to Japan. The circles of his influence kept widen- 
ing until after ten years, when he was called up 
higher, he was the mainspring of a network of ac- 
tivities in Kyoto, the old capital, including Sunday 
Schools, a church and dormitory for university stu- 
dents, a kindergarten and several men’s Bible 
classes. He well exemplified some of the distinctive 
things a missionary can contribute even in a coun- 
try like Japan where the native pastors are able 
and highly educated—training workers not by lec- 
turing to them but by being a yoke-fellow with them, 
resourceful pioneering in new fields and forms of 
work, sticking to a job with radiant courage amid 
lonely and trying circumstances, because of a tested 
faith in God Immanuel, re-enforced by the conscious- 
ness of a great home church and generations of 
Christian forebears. 

Thus far our illustrations have applied chiefly 
to men, but it would be easy to give as varied illus- 
trations from the careers of women in world service. 
In Japan (with which the writer is best acquainted) 
it is well known that some of the finest work among 


12 


young. men has been done by high-souled missionary 
women. One thinks of Miss Eliza Talcott, who, be- 
side being the founder of Kobe Women’s College, 
was the mother confessor of scores of Japanese pas- 
tors and who spent countless hours writing letters 
to men who were groping toward Christ. She was 
one of that small group of undiscouragable inter- 
cessors who believed that Pastor Kanamori would 
return to the Church,—and he did, though after she 
had been called home. Today he is Japan’s most 
powerful evangelist. 

Among many other examples are Miss Buzzell and 
Miss Bradshaw, who are still working at Sendai, 
that mine of Christian leadership. Today their old 
“boys” have become professors and lawyers and pas- 
tors and engineers all over the Empire. Among them 
is that most influential leader of the democratic and 
liberal movement, Dr. Yoshino, professor of politics 
in Tokyo Imperial University. 

The invaluable services of women in education 
and house to house evangelism and Bible school 
teaching are too well known to call for special men- 
tion. It is often forgotten, however, how potent an 
influence is exerted by those self-forgetful mothers 
who create that masterpiece, a Christian home, and 
amid untoward surroundings nurture children into 
the family of God. This alone is a high and diffi- 
cult achievement. All the more impressive, there- 
fore, is it to see some such busy mothers supervise 


13 


schools and Bible women, and make time to mother 
the wives of evangelists and teachers. In South 
India Mrs. L. R. Scudder, of the Dutch Reformed 
Mission, added to all these other activities the teach- 
ing of lace-making as a means of self-support for 
the women in the Bible Training School. She 
learned the art herself during a fortnight’s delay © 
between steamers in China. The oldest son of this 
lady, by the way, has just sailed for India to be- 
come a medical missionary, the fourth in direct line 
from that pioneer medical missionary, Dr. John 
Scudder, who is known as the “grandfather of the 
Student Volunteer Movement.” 


MENDERS OF BODY AND SPIRIT 


It would be hard to overstate the value of med- 
ical work abroad in any field one happens to name. 
Dr. Christie* of Mukden and his understudy, Dr. 
Arthur Jackson,'; that brilliant Scotch Student 
Volunteer who gave his life’ fighting the pneu- 
monic plague, have rendered a humanitarian service 
which potentates have been glad to honor and a 
religious service which needs no praise from men. 
The rising standard of medical equipment and 
teaching made possible in China by the Rockefeller 
Medical Board offers the ambitious medical Volun- 





*Thirty years in Mukden. Mrs. Dugald Christie. Constable. 


+The Life of Dr. Arthur Jackson of Manchuria. Alfred J. 
Costain. Hodder & Stonghton. 


14 


teer assurance that the missionary movement stands 
for the wedding of the most advanced science with 
the most effective religion. 


SOCIAL ENGINEERS 


Men and women who have caught the social vision 
will find that the industrial revolution has burst 
upon the Orient, creating the same problems and 
calling for the same remedies as in the Occident. 
Japan is taking such strides in manufacturing and 
trade and shipping that Greater Tokyo with its belts 
of factories is the fourth city in the world, with 
three and a half million people. Unlike those of 
Saturn, these belts are not light, but dark with 
the shadow of the evils which follow when tens 
of thousands of country folk are drawn into the 
raw factory suburbs, kept at high-powered ma- 
chinery for eleven to thirteen hours a day, robbed 
of the fresh air and the neighborhood recreation 
and the moral bracing of their rural homes. Sim- 
ilar developments are taking place in other parts 
of the Orient. But quite apart from these more 
startling modern social problems, there are deep- 
rooted social evils in all mission lands which will 
be cured only when the best scientific method and 
the strongest Christian motive are both brought to 
bear upon them. 

Here is the vocation for some of those men and 
women who have been set aflame with social pas- 


~ 


is: 


sion by prophets like Rauschenbusch and Harry 
Ward and Washington Gladden. But first of all 
let the need abroad be clearly grasped. It is not 
for sociologists, but for Christian social engineers. 
The universities of non-Christian lands will turn 
out scientific social experts in abundance, but the 
Christian movement must supply the indispensable 
sympathy and the character-making redemptive 
forces. First or last the social welfare institu- 
tions and movements that are to abide and bear 
fruit must derive their power from Jesus Christ. 

Japan—to name but one field—is in urgent need 
of a few missionaries able to make social surveys, 
to create successful settlements and working men’s 
clubs, and to make these institutions training schools 
for social leaders. Thus far missionaries have sel- 
dom been qualified to do such work. But they have 
been forced into it by the appalling need, lest the 
plastic moment be forever lost. Merle Davis, of 
Tokyo, for instance, had specialized in history, but 
when he was asked five years ago to write an article 
for The Japan Evangelist on ‘‘The Occupation of 
Tokyo,” he studied the facts and the facts forced 
him to tell the missions and churches that not a 
single missionary was living among the nine hun- 
dred thousand people on Tokyo’s lower East Side. 
And not in vain, for already four agencies have 
begun work in that district. 


16 


HOW NOT TO DO IT 


One danger today is that in the general enthu- 
siasm for social work poorly qualified missionaries 
will attempt it, and ill-conceived, overlapping agen- 
cies will be born, only to pine away after a period 
of forced respiration. Another grave danger is that 
such social institutions will be exotics, foreign in 
plan, in support and in management. It would be 
far wiser for a while to have only a few well-planned 
institutions, as demonstration and training centers, 
conducted from the first in partnership with the 
native leaders. One example of an institution so 
conceived is the social settlement recently projected 
by Miss Caroline Macdonald, the former Canadian 
student leader, for that hotbed of poverty and vice 
and crime, Asakusa Ward in East Tokyo. The pro- 


ject has grown out of years of effective social- 
religious work. Some of the ablest Christian Japa- 


nese leaders are joint partners in the whole enter- 
prise and they have undertaken to raise a fourth 
of the $300,000 required to establish it. 


NEW WORLD BUILDERS 


The missionary must shun even the appearance 
of evil when it comes to meddling in the politics of 
other nations. And yet he finds himself a part of 
the most powerful international and_ inter-racial 
constructive force that the world has ever known, 
the missionary movement. For a century it has 


17 


been laying the subterranean piers on which must 
rest any league of nations which is to prevent more 
wars than it causes. For apart from the Christian 
motive the ideal of international co-operation has 
never been more than an irridescent dream. It is 
touching these underlying moral issues that every 
missionary has a real part to play in the thicken- 
ing international drama, and to some it is given to 
play leading roles. It would not be difficult to name 
a score of missionaries who as faithful ambassadors 
of Christ have exerted a decisive influence for right- 
eousness and fair play and brotherliness among the 
nations. 

These are no times for petty private plans. Men 
must think in terms of humanity and of God. The 
entire social and international life of mankind is 
in convulsion. Who is sufficient for these things? 
Like a battle cry we hear Paul’s ringing words, 
“Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Christian college stu- 
dent who plots life on any lower plane will drift 
into one of the side eddies, while the main stream 
moves majestically on toward the larger Purpose. 


18 





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